[Ele] ToT Boss Tips

Hey everyone. I'm posting this thread to be a spot to both post and look for tips on the new bosses, specifically for elemental. I will post anything I know about the bosses I've downed, and I will try to update the post with information from other people as well. Note that there will not be actual strats listed, unless something is relevant to elemental specifically. These are just elemental-specific tips to work into your strat.

Jin'rokh the Breaker

Regular
I highly recommend using PE over EB, and potentially using the FE glyph, depending on your guild's DPS. We killed it in 3:11, and that was with a misplaced bloodlust at the beginning instead of once we had a pool. Not even enough time for the second ascendance to run its full course. If you're going to kill it in under 3 minutes, don't use the FE glyph and wait to pop any CDs until you have a pool up and bloodlust is popped, since you're only going to get one of each CD. Coordinate popping AG with your healers during the Lightning Storm. Pop SR (and your defensive if not using NG) on every Lightning Storm.

Heroic
The main change is that instead of using SR or defensives during Lightning Storm, you should spec into Astral Shift and pop both of them when you get Ionized. Glyphed HST can also help with this. PE is basically a must on this for heroic because you won't be able to cast EB during a large portion of the fight. Especially during Lightning Storm, where the diffusions from Lightning Strikes must be avoided.

Horridon

Regular
Chain lightning. Use it, love it. While adds are spawning, you'll be doing a fair bit of spamming CL. Try to keep a FS running on the boss, however, as with the 40% increased damage buff the GCD is well worth it. It also allows you to toss LvBs on the boss whenever the adds are in a lull, not grouped up, or you're waiting on tank threat. There are lots of points at which switching and tossing some damage on the boss is better than CLing two low-health mobs or pulling threat on newly spawned adds. Also, make sure you're watching to snag interrupts on the Dinomancers when they cast Dino-Mending. Pop SR whenever think you're going to take damage. You'll want to spec PE on this, as once the adds are gone, you'll want to burst as hard as possible to kill the big guy quickly and burn through the dino's 200% increased damage taken before your tank gets wrecked and your healers oom.First adds: Nothing special, just AoE 'em down. Pop SR if you get the stun on you, just in case the dispel isn't quick and you take a tick or two of the sand.Second adds: Interrupt Venom Bolt Volley on the Priests and Effusions. You are perfect for this because your interrupt is ranged with a low CD. Don't worry about your DPS, you'll probably top the meters by a wide margin anyway. As long as everyone is pro on interrupts, you shouldn't get any more than a few stacks of the poison, and damage won't be bad enough to warrant AG.Third adds: Dwarves should pop stoneskin immediately upon being infected with Deadly Plague, so as to save healer mana. Other than that, try to kite the Champions as much as possible, since they'll be switching targets nonstop. This phase is harsh on healers, so it's not a bad idea to pop AG here (if you didn't already on the poison).Fourth adds: Interrupt the Flame Casters and the Beast Shaman, who dismount from the bears. The fireballs and chain lightning hit pretty hard. Also, you're on curse dispel duty. The Hex of Confusion goes out far too often for the healers to be able to handle it themselves, so you're a key player here. Keep it off the tank especially.

Heroic
This. Fucking. Fight. Is. So. God. Damn. Stupid.
He summons an add called a "Direhorn Spirit" that focuses a "random" (AAAAAHAHAH, random my ass) raid member and then spends the entire fight chasing that person. It cannot be killed. It just has to be hit to knock it back away from you. If it touches you, it one-shots you. But guess what? It always targets ranged DPS first. Guess who that is? You. Which means you are almost always one of the first targeted. Makes me want to scream. Best thing to do is make a macro to focus him and try to pay really close attention. That's it. We can't sick a pet on it (other than PE, but that's not a good idea) like a warlock or hunter, we don't have any easy, no-CD instants that aren't needed for DPS, we're just fucked. We also can't continue CL while we're hitting the add to get it away from us. We're probably the worst target for the raid to lose, and yet we're one of the first to get it. It makes me rage so freaking hard. -.- Also, spec AS and AS/SR every Dire Call. I recommend just macroing them together so that you use AS whenever you have it and SR every time. There's no point in popping DRs on the AoE effects for the most part, as you're either going to die nearly instantly (sand, poison), or your healers are already dealing with everyone anyway (poison volley, diseases, etc.). God help you. :\
+Ok, I did figure out a slightly more reliable way of getting the Direhorn off of you. Drop searing totem and use Totemic Projection to place it as far behind the spirit as possible. Then flame shock it and LvB it. This should get the totem targeting it for a bit, and it should knock the spirit significantly back on it its own while you go back to CLing and freaking the fuck out over the damage and people getting one-shot.
+Another way to keep the Direhorn off of you is to create an unleash weapon focus macro. Basically focus the direhorn, and then have a cast @focus macro that you can hit real fast and go back to what you were doing.

Council of Elders

Regular
This fight can be a bit of a clusterfuck at first, but it starts to clean up once you've seen it a couple times. You should set Mar'li as your focus and use a focus interrupt macro to interrupt as many of the Wrath of the Loa as possible. Ranged interrupts and tank interrupts are crucial on her to prevent as much tank damage as possible. Your healers WILL struggle on this fight at first, so any damage prevention you can possibly eek out is worth doing. I recommend using Earthgrab Totem and Totemic Projection macro'd together for this fight. Whenever Mar'li casts Blessed/Shadowed Loa Spirit (and you should be one of the first to know, since you've got her on focus), you should immediately hit your macro and drop the Earthgrab on top of Mar'li so that it immediately slows the add. You'll likely have other people (Curse of Exhaustion from a lock is perfect) slowing it, but you should always drop it anyway, just to make sure it gets slowed. Negligence is never an excuse. Pop SR whenever you're on Kazra'jin and he overloads, as that reflect damage can be brutal. One of the biggest sources of raid damage in this can be reflected damage from overload. Pop AG basically whenever the raid drops, as your healers will be struggling for basically the entire fight. There are some lulls, but they're pretty short.
+Apparently glyphed grounding totem will prevent the reflected damage from Kazra'jin's overload for your entire party, which makes it an amazing raid CD in this case. Drop this for sure. Update: No longer works.
+If you do feel like the slows are being handled by your group, you can spec for Windwalk Totem to clear the root and get out of the sand easier.
25man: Apparently this is a lot easier, due to extra healers and more interrupts/slows. So keep doing your job, but don't worry too much about stuff like popping CDs when you get rooted in the sand or anything.

Heroic

Tortos

Regular
This is pretty straight forward. Use earthbind/grab on CD while the turtles are spinning, as the slow makes them easier to dodge. CL (with glyph) the bats down at every opportunity. Pop CDs (I recommend PE, though EB should be fine on this fight) after a turtle has hit the boss for the extra 25% damage. Use SR whenever he begins casting Quake Stomp. Pop AG after a Quake Stomp.

25: Apparently there are enough of the Whirl Turtles on 25 that you may not have much time for CL on the bats. In this case, EB may be better than PE, since you won't be bursting quite as much. Killing Whirl Turtles would favor more sustainable DPS.

Heroic

Megaera

Regular
This one is really tough on your healers, so anything you can do to heal/prevent damage is crucial here. SR is up for every Rampage, so don't forget to pop it. I recommend using SBT here and popping it before each of the Acid Rains. The ARs don't hit hard at first, but they ramp up very quickly as the fight progresses, and you'll want to help your healers as much as possible. It's also an option to pop it during rampage, but there are likely to be a lot of other CDs going out during that time, and I feel like preventing the AR damage is a slightly better choice. Neither is the wrong choice, however.

Heroic

Ji-Kun

Regular
This one... I don't really understand. We were doing platforms at first, but she was dropping so fast that we ended up saying "fuck it" and just burning her and ignoring the platforms. So it basically turned into a mildly more interesting Patchwerk fight. Best thing to do in this case, I suppose, it set yourself up for as much burst as possible. Meaning PE/EM. If your raid is doing platforms, eles are excellent for platforms, so you should be on that job. Glyph your CL and go crazy. If you ascend on a platform, you can solo it very quickly, which means other people can stay on the boss and kill her even faster. Use SR and AG during the Quills.

Heroic

Durumu the Forgotten

Regular
This guy is pretty fun. You'll want to use PE for sure, as there is a very large amount of movement in this fight and EB will suffer. Use SR when you're soaking cones. AG whenever the healers need it. It's pretty straightforward. Depending on how many melee you have, you may not need to switch to the red adds.

Heroic

Primordius

Regular
Again, I recommend PE, since the idea behind this fight is to burst as long as you can while mutated. Save all your CDs for the boss when you get mutated. Try to line them up with lust and/or trinket/tinker CDs. Use SR for the Gas, or for Pustules if you think you're going to get hit. AG sometime around the 2-4 minute mark when there's some damage so that it will be ready again around the 5-7 minute mark. The later part of the fight will be when there's a lot of AoE going out because he's mutated a lot. Don't glyph CL, since you're not going to use it much at all, let alone for 5 targets. Glyph FS for the small healing.

Heroic

Dark Animus

Regular
The beginning of this fight can be a bit boring. Save all CDs (spec PE again for the burst) for when Dark Animus himself is activated. For the beginning, drop Healing Stream Totem on CD, and pop off healing surges whenever you don't have anything else to do. Using SBT is a good choice here, as it will absorb a fair amount of the melee damage from your add. Get the add you're tanking down to about 50% and leave it there, since your lightning shield can be problematic if you take him too low. For the end, pop SR before Interrupting Jolt and use the downtime while you're not casting to refresh FS and/or drop a SBT. Pop AG after a Jolt.

Heroic

Iron Qon

Regular
I would probably recommend EB here, since the fight doesn't have AoE or a burst phase, but PE obviously still works fine (I used PE).Fire: Use SR when your group is eating the Unleashed Flame. That's about it for this phase.Lightning: Use SR during the Windstorm. This is extremely helpful for the healers, as flat damage reductions are the only thing that prevent damage in this phase. Drop an HST when you get to the far side, as you'll have nothing else to do. If you have a warlock, get them to put a portal from the eye of the storm to the edge and half your raid (on 10man) can completely skip the mechanic. If you are running, goblins can rocket jump to get some extra-fast distance while running out.Frost: Pop SR any time you feel like you might have to cross one of the spear lines, as they tick HARD in the frost phase. Much harder than the first two phases did. This next part needs confirmation, but glyphing Grounding Totem and dropping it may be able to completely prevent damage reflected to your group for the duration of the totem. Make sure your raid leader places you in a group with nothing but DPS before the fight starts so that you can prevent as much damage as possible.Earth: Pop SR on CD during the AoE from the spears. Go crazy.

Heroic

Twin Consorts

Regular
Again, EB recommended, but PE works perfectly fine. I'm not positive as to the implications of multidotting Suen during the first phase. I went ahead and did it because I wasn't sure and wanted to put as much damage on her as possible so that we would spend less time with her alive in the dusk phase. Pop SR right before Cosmic Barrage. You should be avoiding the Moon Lotus Slumber Spores, but if you happen to get hit by one, you can drop tremor totem to dispel the sleep effect. This becomes very important in the final phase after Suen is dead and people are tending to tunnel vision Lu'lin. Listen for callouts and be ready to drop Tremor for other people as well. During the Dusk phase, pop SR for Tidal Force. SBT is also a nice CD for this fight. Pop it during any of Suen's channeled fire abilities, since SBT works better for damage over time rather than large hits at once. Coordinate AG with your healers, but it will probably be needed after a Cosmic Barrage and during Tidal Force.

Heroic

Lei Shen

Regular
This fight is really obnoxious. PE is probably best here, especially since you'll sometimes have random downtimes during the Intermission phases when the adds haven't spawned or are too far away to hit. The reason PE shines is because your eles will be on CD during those intermissions and you'll be ready to pop them and burn the boss during the main phases. I also recommend glyphing HST, as you'll have a lot of downtime in the Intermissions for popping it, and the 10% DR is fantastic, especially for soaking Static Shock. It's also a free 10% DR on almost all of Lei Shen's raid attacks, so feel free to drop it whenever you happen to have time. Pop SR whenever Thunderstruck targets you or someone near you. For the Intermissions, save it for if you're needing to soak a Static Shock, as those can be lethal. I also recommend taking Astral Shift for this fight, as stacking AS + SR will allow you to solo-soak a static shock if your group is struggling with those. AG is best saved for any time at which the raid is taking damage from him not channeling one of the four pillars, or for when the ball lightnings are bouncing around. AG will be a serious life saver in the final phase when balls are going crazy and the wind is being a bitch. A lot of this fight revolves around correct positioning and damage prevention. Don't be afraid to stop casting and go to ghost wolf to get somewhere you need to be. Better alive with 2k less DPS at the end than dead and causing a wipe. I haven't had a chance to test it, but it's possible that grounding may work on something on this fight. Feel free to drop it and see if it eats anything.
+If you're a goblin, rocket jump is an amazing survival CD here, since you can do all kinds of stuff with it: rocket jumping away from Thunderstruck so as to take less damage, rocket jumping to a Bouncing Bolt that you might miss, rocket jumping to get into or away from an overcharge, rocket jumping away from an add that's beating on you, etc. It's really a fantastic CD on this fight (and most fights, tbh). Use it as often as possible. One of the absolute best times to use it is if you get caught in a lightning whip with too far to run or a wind pushing you back into it. It will absolutely save your life there. Our kill attempt I rocket jumped a lightning whip in the final phase and lived where I would have died, and then had it happen again, this time killing me, but allowing me to reincarnate and finish off the boss.

thanks for this, i'm trying out PE atm to see how i like it. also trying to figure out when i should use EM/EoE.

Yeah, I'm in the same position with trying to decide what to use where. I think I may stick to EotE for the heavier AoE fights like Horridon and Tortos, and then use EM/AS for the other fights. Haven't decided yet on EM vs. AS. I'm thinking that EM may be the best until we get the meta, and then it will end up being AS.

i would definetly say no, the new conudctivity is really good for fight where you keep down a healing rain 80-100% of the time, however, mid phases on megaera are not very healing intensive, it's really all about the rampages (which last 20 secs), so i'd suggest using AG because it's gonna be up for every 2nd rampage.

Wouldn't that also mean that hunter pets wouldn't benefit? Meaning a BM hunter would automatically be shit on this fight? Seems like Blizzard wouldn't let something like that happen (hah). Can't check my logs because our dumbass rogue screwed up his logs on Pimordius. All the other bosses are fine. >.> If someone could link another ele shaman log of Primordius, that would be great.

for council, glyphed Grounding Totem work exactly as on Meng for the "reflect damage", and will make your whole party (5players) immune to it, allowing you to burst the boss for ~30sec (5sec during his charge, 20sec (grounding beeing up 15sec) of the debuff, and 5sec charge again), which will neglect a lot of the damage done in that phase

Just a quick question, we have a druid that can sym me for solar beam. Question is, does solar beam work on the poison volleys?

Yes, it should.

---------- Post added 2013-03-07 at 06:37 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Bethan

for council, glyphed Grounding Totem work exactly as on Meng for the "reflect damage", and will make your whole party (5players) immune to it, allowing you to burst the boss for ~30sec (5sec during his charge, 20sec (grounding beeing up 15sec) of the debuff, and 5sec charge again), which will neglect a lot of the damage done in that phase

Wouldn't that also mean that hunter pets wouldn't benefit? Meaning a BM hunter would automatically be shit on this fight? Seems like Blizzard wouldn't let something like that happen (hah). Can't check my logs because our dumbass rogue screwed up his logs on Pimordius. All the other bosses are fine. >.> If someone could link another ele shaman log of Primordius, that would be great.

we didnt have a hunter when we killed him but i dont know.. all i know is my regular fire ele was hitting the boss for 5k, so i would imagine the PFE would suffer the same consequence.

council: on 25 man this fight was honestly a complete joke and seemed severely undertuned. we have two healers that we would like to replace and healing seemed fine. literally cleave to your heart's content. we did not wipe on this boss. obviously don't completely ignore mechanics, but you should be able to just cleave the entire time. i've heard that 10 man seems to be a bit tougher.

tortos: while CL spamming the bats is fun and exciting and good for numbers, your dps as a ranged may be more required on the turtles full time until it is time to nuke the boss as his health gets low and turtles come out non stop. this really depends on your group's strategy and how good your dps are. for our kill we needed as much dps on the toitles as we could get, i did have some opportunities to get some CL spam uptime on the bats, and we were kinda carrying a few dps

megaera: there is no arcane head on 25 man normal, this is only for the heroic mode as far as i know. we were very close to a kill here but ran out of time, but really everything is the same for 25 man as mentioned above. what i have been using for most of ToT so far is a macro for shamanistic rage and stone bulwark totem to go out at the same time - pretty effective damage cd on a 1 minute cooldown. it syncs up pretty well with most damaging mechanics. i am generally saving this for the acid rains, but most of them you should be avoiding as elemental. i only pop this if i know i am going to take a significant amount of damage from them because i either didn't pay attention enough to move far away in time or if it is just convenient for me to not move or something silly : ) acid rains really aren't too bad early on in the fight if you aren't directly under them. if you have defensives available for rampages, use them, especially later on in the fight. i am also using ancestral guidance during the later rampages as often as i can.

if i see any other things to add, especially concerning 25 mans, i will add as i progress

we didnt have a hunter when we killed him but i dont know.. all i know is my regular fire ele was hitting the boss for 5k, so i would imagine the PFE would suffer the same consequence.

Fire elemental is a guardian, while PET is a pet, and some mechanics work differently for those.

Looking at the few available wols on this boss (I havn't tried it yet), I found this one with two elemental shaman, one with PE and one without, and PE seemed to do 4 time as much damage than Greater Elemental totem (both were up for 1mn). So it seems possible that primal elemental is affected by the buff whereas greater fire elemental isn't

I used Windwalker Totem on Council to escape the Sandzones. Had enought slows and stuns for the Loa spawns.

Another thing that gets me is the general chat when inside the Garrison. It totally reminds me of every prison film I've ever watched. The prisoners confined to their cells are talking to each other through the walls. Their chat is mostly pointless, vulgar and revolving around stuff they ll do once they get out. This is EXACTLY the content of every Garrison chat I've ever had to tolerate.

Fire elemental is a guardian, while PET is a pet, and some mechanics work differently for those.

Looking at the few available wols on this boss (I havn't tried it yet), I found this one with two elemental shaman, one with PE and one without, and PE seemed to do 4 time as much damage than Greater Elemental totem (both were up for 1mn). So it seems possible that primal elemental is affected by the buff whereas greater fire elemental isn't

This is what I would have expected as well, since the PE elementals get a pet bar. I certainly didn't notice my damage suffering on this fight. I think I was second on DPS, just barely behind our rogue.

If it is true that PE elementals don't suffer the 75% reduction, that would make it even more important to spec PE for Prim.

Edit: after looking at the log, I'm quite sure that PE eles gain the buff, since his was able to pull 52k DPS while it was up. If it had been getting the 75% reduction, it would be able to pull over 200k DPS normally, which is obviously impossible.

---------- Post added 2013-03-07 at 07:17 PM ----------

Originally Posted by UcanDoSht

I used Windwalker Totem on Council to escape the Sandzones. Had enought slows and stuns for the Loa spawns.

Thanks, I'll add that as a possible alternative.

---------- Post added 2013-03-07 at 07:37 PM ----------

Can anyone confirm whether the damage reflect on Frozen Resilience on the Iron Qon fight can be prevented with glyphed Grounding Totem as well? We ran some attempts for the last few minutes of our raid last night, but I hadn't known that trick yet and didn't test it myself. I'll check tonight when we kill it, of course, but I thought I'd ask.